Mercury Recycling Blog

Home Grown technology

Lamp recycler Mercury Recycling has opened a new recycling plant, using technology designed by the company.

The new plant in Trafford Park, Manchester will have the capacity to deal with 40 million lamps per annum once a second recycling line is installed later this year. Currently, the single line of the plant handles more than 5,000 lamps an hour.

At its previous plant Mercury used technology from Swedish electronics recycling technology manufacturer MRT. But managing director, Bryan Neill, explained to letsrecycle.com that the company designed its own equipment when it found that the Swedish technology didn't have a high enough capacity.

Baroness Barbara Young and Bryan Neill feeding lamps into Mercury Recycling's new machine

Mr Neill said: "We designed and developed our own plant, which separates the ferrous and non-ferrous metals, glass, plastic and phosphor powder. Our on site distillation then separates the mercury which is sold back to lamp manufacturers to create a closed loop system."

Marketing Mr Neill added that the company was looking into the possibility of marketing its lamp recycling equipment abroad.

Mercury Recycling held the official opening of the plant last week, with chief executive of the Environment Agency - Baroness Barbara Young present. The plant has been up and running since the beginning of October.

Mercury now plans to move into other areas of WEEE recycling at its new site. Mr Neill explained that the 30,000 square foot capacity meant that there was plenty of room to expand into. He said: "This is now our headquarters. There is plenty of potential for expansion and we will look to develop the site further in the foreseeable future."

Mercury Recycling Coronavirus Business Continuity Statement

We would like to reassure all customers during the crisis caused by the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic that we are still accepting requests and are ready to collect your waste Lamps, Batteries and Electronic Items.

We are closely monitoring the crisis and following the guidelines given by the government and the World Health Organisation.

As this crisis has developed we would like to reassure you that our main concern is the health and wellbeing of our staff and customers and with this in mind we have made changes to reduce staff in our offices by allowing staff to work remotely from home and to keep customers fully informed with our waste services.

Mercury Recycling hope that you are all keeping safe and you are not largely affected by the coronavirus outbreak. We would like to thank you for your continued support during these unprecedented times.